2015 Fire and Life Safety Study: Fire and life safety in hospitals, health care facilities

More than half of fire protection engineers specify, design, or make product selections for hospitals and health care facilities. Through the 2015 Fire and Life Safety Study, Consulting-Specifying Engineer identified four key findings on hospital and health care facility projects.

The Consulting-Specifying Engineer 2015 Fire and Life Safety Study indicated that 52% of engineers specify, design, or make product selections for hospitals and health care facilities—and 78% of these engineers are responsible for determining requirements/writing specifications, 64% supervise or consult on projects, and 58% research and evaluate options. Below are four high-level findings impacting the fire and life safety industry today as they relate to hospital/health care facility projects:

Annual specified products value: The average firm specifies $2,917,208 in total fire and life safety products for new and existing hospitals and health care facilities on a yearly basis. Thirty-three percent of these firms specify more than $3 million in fire and life safety products.

Future critical challenges: The top critical challenges or issues affecting the future of fire and life safety systems in hospitals and health care facilities, according to respondents, are subjective interpretation of regulations by code authorities (78%), code enforcement not understanding new systems (68%), and inadequate budget for good design (67%).

Important design factors: Nine in 10 engineers consider product quality, a manufacturer’s reputation, and service support to be very important factors that lead to their selection of fire and life safety systems for hospitals and health care facilities. Other important factors include previous experience with a manufacturer (85%), a manufacturer’s complete product series or system capabilities (84%), and a product’s technical advantage (83%).